Ignition for Education

In a previous post, I suggested that teachers work together to, “patiently explore and discuss how to teach the curriculum.” I argued that,

No pedagogical approach, whether Harkness or other Socratic methods, or project-based learning, or constructivism, is the answer. What works depends on the material to be taught, student demographics, what the students are accustomed to and what they are capable of, classroom dynamics, and the particular skills of the teacher…teachers in each school should experiment and share their successes and failures with each other. This way, they can gain a shared understanding of how to teach their students.

Another way to understand this is that all of the teachers in a school together form a community of students of pedagogy. A professional development program may be one ingredient that goes into the making of such a community. Discussions and show-and-tell type activities in faculty meetings may be another. However, the most important ingredients are informal, non-mandatory discussions between teachers, non-evaluative classroom observations, and formal or informal mentoring of novice teachers by veterans.

Informal discussions might happen during recess, during prep periods, in the faculty room, or electronically. They might involve a teacher raising a question or a problem, and other teachers responding. This does not put the teacher raising the question in a position of relative weakness or her colleagues in a position of relative strength. It does not make them the teachers or her the learner. It does not make them better teachers than her. I suspect that, unfortunately, teachers are unwilling to start these discussions because they think that it does all of these things.

Non-evaluative classroom observations should be mutual. Pairs of teachers could observe each other, or observations could be arranged in a round robin: A observes B, B observes C, C observed D, D observes E, and E observes A. These kinds of arrangements will ensure that classroom observation doesn’t have a ring of hierarchy. Of course, a teacher who thinks another teacher has something they can learn from—an activity perhaps, or a style of classroom management—should feel free to observe them outside of any such arrangement.

The teacher who observes should seek to learn, but also to give feedback. Giving feedback to another teacher can be frightening, but it is also something a teacher should be able to do skillfully. The giving of feedback is, after all, a core professional skill.

I can already hear teachers asking, “How do I have time for this?” I also “hear” that in the sense that I understand and sympathize.

In the case of mentoring of a novice teacher by a veteran, the dynamic is a little different. There is an assumption that the veteran has more to teach the novice that vice-versa, though it should surprise nobody if the veteran also learns something from the novice. The novice’s observations of the veteran, however, will be mostly about the novice learning from the veteran, while the veterans observations of the novice will be mostly about the veteran preparing feedback for the novice.

Ideally, each novice should have several mentors in her first year to three years in the profession, whether simultaneously or consecutively. Teachers tend to be strong in different ways, so different veterans will be able to teach novices different skills and approaches.

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This kind of culture is hard to create. Teachers get accustomed to living in the silos of our classrooms, our subjects, our individual ways of doing things. School geography reinforces this. We each have our own room, which we decorate and personalize in our own ways. These rooms usually don’t have glass walls overlooking common areas, as many offices do. They are isolating. Faculty rooms are often bare-bones, and their refreshment offerings are often disappointing or non-existent, so they don’t become the gathering and discussion venues that they should be.

After a short time in the profession, a teacher has often pulled together some teaching methods that they feel, rightly or wrongly, are helping their students, and these methods may be a rut that they are unwilling to climb out of. In my experience, any suggestion that a teacher may benefit from trying new things or from observing and learning from other teachers is often seen as a grievous personal insult. Perhaps one reason is that experimenting is scary. There’s a risk of failure. A solution to this is for other teachers and administrators to praise the willingness to experiment, even when an experiment does not work out. Of course, we should also encourage each other to know when to call time on a failing experiment.

But I believe that there is a deeper reason: Teaching is a morally charged profession. We know that what we do profoundly affects the present and future of vulnerable (and oftentimes adorable) children. So, admitting a need to improve, to learn, can feels like admitting to a moral failing, to having failed these children up to the present moment.

If you can accept that you are not a perfect teacher, if you seek and discover ways to improve your practice, even after decades in the classroom, you are not guilty of failing your students up to now. Rather, your desire for professional growth shows that you are a conscientious servant of your students. You should be proud of yourself when you seek to grow, and when you recognize your own need to grow. And I am convinced that the best way to grow is to participate in the community of pedagogy that the faculty you belong to can become.

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It may help teachers to become more growth-oriented if, outside of their professional lives, they pursue excellence in an art form, craft, sport, or other hobby. I consider myself more open to professional growth than most teachers, and I believe that one reason is that, when I was still quite new to the profession, I started learning ballroom dancing. I became devoted to it. I took lessons consistently, listened to my teachers, practiced a lot, and came to have some success in competitions. I think this opened me up to learning and growing, to accepting my growth areas and working on them. I believe I would be less of a teacher if I had not become a dancer.